TORONTO— Twenty years after Ontario introduced pay equity, a new study finds the practice is dying on the vine – starving from years of government neglect.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ study, Putting Fairness Back Into Women’s Pay, shows most Ontario employers ignore their obligation to pay women fairly; and the government is failing to fully fund the pay equity adjustments owed working women.
Ontario Alternative Budget
TORONTO—Four years after the McGuinty Liberals have been in office, Ontario is still living under the shadow of the Mike Harris/Ernie Eves government, says the 2007 Ontario Alternative Budget (OAB).
The alternative budget, released today by the OAB Working Group of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, assesses McGuinty government’s first term in office and finds little progress has been made to address growing income inequality and persistent poverty.
TORONTO—Despite promises to do more, the Ontario government is spending less than half of what it spent on affordable housing in 2000, says an Ontario Alternative Budget study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Almost 600,000 Ontario households—1.7 million women, men, and children, or 15% of all Ontarians—are in core housing need, but the study’s author, Michael Shapcott, says the government spends only 14 cents per person a day on affordable housing.
TORONTO—Ontario’s finances are in much better shape than Finance Minister Greg Sorbara claims, says an Ontario Alternative Budget (OAB) Technical Paper released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
According to the report, authored by OAB Co-chair and CCPA Research Associate Hugh Mackenzie, it is well within the government’s capacity to balance its budget in each of the next three years—contrary to the government’s 2006 Fall Update, which projected deficits through 2008-9.
Look through the smokescreen created by Premier Dalton McGuinty's $23 billion gap campaign and you see a provincial government that is in denial; one that has not been prepared to tackle the fundamental problems for which his government inherited responsibility when it took office.
If you only read the headlines, the record looks promising. The McGuinty government has increased funding significantly for health and education — two of its major priorities. But even that has not bought the real change that Ontario needs.